Industry 5.0 Basic Introduction – By V. V. Gharat

It is a great pleasure to mention that The Textile Association (India) – Mumbai had successful Conference in Feb. 2019 as Wake Up Call & now it is time to complement or correct it to Industry 5.0.

Industry 5.0 – not another revolution, a complement or correction

The term Industry 5.0 popped up as a reaction to the vision of Industry 4.0. It is driven by the impact of the Pandemic, the focus on topics such as Sustainability / Resilience which is very essential subject to Experts, Policymakers & Consulting organizations.

How Industry 5.0 fits in the (post)-pandemic

With Industry 5.0, many people wanted to bring the human, social, and environmental dimensions back into the equation. They felt this wasn’t the case in Industry 4.0 and initially mainly focused on the human touch.

It is indeed not a coincidence that the attention for Industry 5.0 is accelerating now. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation, it accelerated the focus on other challenges of our time & the importance of People, Environment, Societal changes.

Industry 4.0 offers mass production with very marginal Human Involvement or No Human Involvement. Industry 5.0 brings Personalization & Human touch back to manufacturing or operation process. Robots are carrying all programmed Jobs with perfection & repeatedly. The programmers are set by human intelligence & it is been carried out but in case of some complicated problems Robot get confused towards failures or many times disasters. Hence Human intelligence is required to resolve issues hence Industry 5.0 exists.

Collaborative Robots are well positioned to become Industry 5.0 tools, helping Human to create personalized products demanded by consumers.

The Fifth Industrial Revolution is the combination of humans & machines at workplace. Industry 5.0 brings benefits to Industry, Workforce & Society. It empowers workers as well address evolving skills & training needs of employees. It helps in increasing competitiveness of industry & attracts excellent talents.

Industry 5.0 will revolutionize Manufacturing systems across the Globe by taking away dull, dirty & repetitive tasks from humans wherever possible. Intelligent Robots & human systems will penetrate manufacturing supply chains with production at shopfloor to an unprecedented level.

The Collaborative Combination of Human Intelligence & many companies are started developing it. It is need of time because auto pilot or auto vehicles are not so successful.

Collaboration of Robot & Human

The term Industry 5.0 refers to people working alongside robots & smart machines. It’s about robots helping humans work better and faster by leveraging advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), big data. It adds a personal human touch to the industry 4.0 pillars of automation & efficiency.

In manufacturing environments, robots have historically performed dangerous, monotonous or physically demanding work, such as welding and painting in car factories and loading and unloading heavy materials in warehouses. As machines in the workplace get smarter and more connected.

Industry 5.0 is aimed at merging those cognitive computing capabilities with human intelligence and resourcefulness in collaborative operations. The pairing of human & machine opens the door to countless opportunities in manufacturing. Since the use of Industry 5.0 may not be clearly understood by manufacturers hence proper educating is important. Manufacturers should start actively strategizing ways to integrate human and machine in order to maximize the unique benefits.

Industry 5.0 is aimed at Supporting – not Superseding – humans

Don’t mistake the upsurge in robotics as an opportunity to eliminate headcount and replace workers who perform repetitive tasks on assembly lines. Manufacturers who understand the value of human intuition and problem-solving capabilities are positioning themselves to thrive.

Many of us often think that manufacturing workers is a poor substitute for a robot, “But in practice, these things are really difficult because intelligent worker is making perfect judgments in view of his long experience. And it turns out that when you take that person away, you end up with some problems that are hard to solve.

While robots are much more consistent than humans & better at precision work, but they’re inflexible and incapable of the adaptability, critical thinking that define us as humans

Working together with people, robots can fulfil their designated purpose of providing assistance & making our lives better. Universal Robots uses the term “Cobots” for collaborative robots to emphasize the importance of people in robotic technology. Industry 5.0 will make the factory a place where creative people can work efficiently along with robots. They can create effective & personalized human experience.

Industry 5.0 is making optimal balance of efficiency & productivity

The objective of Industry 4.0 is to interconnect machines, processes and systems for maximum performance optimization.

Industry 5.0 takes such efficiency and productivity a step further. It’s about refining the collaborative interactions between humans and machines. In manufacturing operations, it is realized that the robots relieve them of physically demanding work and they can concentrate on other tasks.

Industry 5.0 recognizes that man and machine must be interconnected to meet the manufacturing complexity of the future in dealing with increasing customization through an optimized robotized manufacturing process.

The progress of Industry 5.0 is unavoidable.

Once you’ve used technology to make a process more efficient, there’s no point in reverting to the old way of doing things. It’s why we use computers with word processing software instead of typewriters. Similarly, Industry 5.0 is the manufacturing world’s future.

While Industry 5.0’s headway can’t be stalled, there are still essential questions and ramifications that must addressed by manufacturers and policymakers. Excessive automation & highly integrated systems are vulnerable to systemic risks such as total network collapse.

It’s not a question of whether a manufacturer can benefit from its personnel working alongside robots, but how they can best leverage new technologies to drive optimal outcomes from human/machine interactions. These are basics of Industry 5.0 & may get more updates from experts who are working on concept.